Hippocampal lipidome and transcriptome profiling alterations triggered by acute exposure of mice to GSM 1800 MHz mobile phone radiation

The widespread use of wireless devices during the last decades is rising the concern about the adverse health effects of the radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation (RF-EMR) emitted from these devices. Studies are targeting on unrevealing the underlying mechanisms of RF-EMR action. The contribution of the “omics” high throughput approaches is a prerequisite towards this direction. In the present work, C57BL/6 adult male mice were sham-exposed (nSE=8) or whole-body exposed (nExp=8) for 2h to GSM 1800 MHz mobile phone radiation at 11 V/m average electric field intensity, and the RF-EMR effects on the hippocampal lipidome and transcriptome profile were evaluated. The data analysis of the phospholipids’ fatty acid residues revealed that the levels of six fatty acids (16:0, 16:1 6+7c, 18:1 9c, 20:5 w3, SFA, MUFA) were significantly altered (p<0.05) in the exposed group. The microarray data analysis demonstrated that the expression of 178 genes changed significantly (p<0.05) between the two groups with a fold change cut off of 1.5. In general, the observed changes point out the attention to a membrane remodeling response of the tissue phospholipids after non-ionizing radiation exposure, reducing the Saturated Fatty Acids (SFA) and EPA omega-3 (20:5 w3) and increasing Monounsaturated Fatty Acids (MUFA) residues and in parallel reflect an impact to genes implicated in critical biological processes, as cell cycle, DNA replication and repair, cell death, cell signaling, nervous system development and function, immune system response, lipid metabolism and cancer Mice were equally divided into two groups: “exposed” (Exp) and “sham exposed” (SE). RNA was extracted from the hippocampus of both groups.